David K. writes,
I need some help. I have been exploring the concept of the 'soul' over the last few months. I've meant it to be a fairly wide open review. I have 'rounded up the usual suspects' philosophically and worked my way through a great deal of the biomedical writings. Presently, I am in the middle of two works: The Soul of the Embryo by David Albert Jones and Soul Machine by George Makari. I am looking for a contemporary philosophical treatment of the topic. I have searched the categories on both your blogs but wonder if there is a direction you can point me to as well.
With pleasure, David.
For a high-level contemporary treatment by a distinguished philosopher of religion, I recommend Richard Swinburne, Are We Bodies or Souls? Oxford UP, 2019. The Soul Hypothesis, eds. Baker and Goetz, Continuum 2011, is a collection of essays by analytic philosophers. For a hard-core old-time Thomist treatment, one that is probably not quite in line with your current interests as a medical doctor, but still highly relevant given your Catholic upbringing, take a gander at Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Life Everlasting and the Immensity of the Soul (no bibliographical details in my copy!). More relevant to your biomedical interests is Norman M. Ford, When Did I Begin? Cambridge UP, 1988.
Directly relevant to your concerns is the mercifully short Were You a Zygote? by G. E. M. Anscombe. Also of interest is Erich Klawonn, Mind and Death: A Metaphysical Investigation, University Press of Southern Denmark, 2009.
I'll add further titles if they occur to me. Comments are enabled if anyone wants to make suggestions.
Finally, here is a review by Thomas Nagel, no slouch of a philosopher, of the Swinburne volume mentioned supra.
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